It wasn’t quite a visit from quarterback Tom Brady, but the trophy that the New England Patriots won for their stunning come-from-behind Super Bowl victory in February was on display at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor despite being involved in a fender bender earlier Saturday.
Cross Center officials said that at least 500 people got their pictures taken with the trophy, a Patriots cheerleader and the team’s mascot just hours after the crash.
Maine State Police Trooper Tyler Maloon said he found himself handling what he thought was just another car vs. deer crash when things got surreal. Maloon was giving the car’s driver and the driver’s wife a ride to the Irving convenience store in Pittsfield after the collision when he heard the couple mention that “the trophy has to be there at such and such a time, and that they’ll have to head back after for opening day at Fenway for a presentation there.”
“Naturally, I ask what trophy,” Maloon recalled in an account on the state police’s Facebook page. “They then tell me that he works for the Patriots and that the Lombardi Trophy is in my cruiser! My mind was blown. Seriously, what are the odds! A story for the ages!”
Maloon, of course, did what the trophy was there for — he got a picture of himself with it. The shot of him on one knee beside the silver football with his cruiser in the background accompanied the Facebook posting.
Mark Hurlburt II of Harrington seemed only slightly less amazed than Maloon when he saw the trophy. Wearing a “Do Your Job” Patriots T-shirt, the 8-year-old stood at the Cross Insurance Center with his parents and brother and stared, wide-eyed, at the trophy for a minute or so before being photographed with it.
Hurlburt regained his composure afterward, saying he had come because his father was a longtime New England fan. The young Hurlburt also wanted to get a picture of the trophy for one of his teachers, he said.
The elder Hurlburt said he found it fascinating how far the Patriots had come since the club’s debut as the Boston Patriots in the old American Football League in the 1960-61 season. In fact, Saturday was the anniversary of the club’s naming its first playing field, Boston University Field, in 1960, according to the team’s history.
The club made an AFL championship game only once, in 1963, and the 35-year-old Hurlburt was 3 years old when the Patriots got crushed in their first Super Bowl appearance, a 46-10 loss to Mike Ditka’s Chicago Bears in 1985’s Super Bowl XX. But he remembers well New England’s first Super Bowl victory, a 20-17 win over the St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI in New Orleans with a second-year man named Tom Brady at quarterback.
Like every other New England fan, Hurlburt said he has loved the Brady era, but unlike at least some fans, he doesn’t take any of it for granted.
“We have gotten so that we are extremely spoiled,” Hurlburt said, “and hopefully, Brady plays for another six or seven years, but if he doesn’t, there could be a big turnaround.”
The trophy last visited Bangor in 2002, after the Pats’ first Super Bowl win. It came to Bangor on Saturday thanks to some lobbying from Bangor Mayor Joe Baldacci and U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, R-Maine, who played high school football with Patriots coach Bill Belichick and remains friends with him.
The mayors of Brewer and Portland also wrote New England Patriots Chairman and CEO Robert Kraft. They asked that the trophy tour the Cross centers in Bangor and Portland, in response to a rebuff from Gov. Paul LePage. LePage said the Patriots would not be invited to Augusta, possibly in response to several New England players saying they would not go to the White House if invited by President Donald Trump.
Cross Insurance Center General Manager Joe Imbriaco said the center kept no exact count of the number of trophy visitors. He said the visit came with only two days’ notice from the Patriots.
“Even though it’s been in the works for a while,” Imbriaco said, “their ability to be able to do this was [reliant upon] a quick turnaround.”
The trophy was on its way back to Massachusetts by 6 p.m. It is due to appear next during Monday’s Opening Day with the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. Baldacci said he hoped no other collisions occurred on the return trip.
“I was just thinking to myself — if they returned to Gillette [Stadium] with the trophy and a bloody dead deer,” he wrote on his Facebook page, “I don’t think Bob Kraft et al would be impressed.”
This story appears through a partnership with the Bangor Daily News.